So-called "soft trim" materials or components are indispensable in furnishing a motor vehicle interior that meets today's demands of a sophisticated market place. For example, automotive headliners, carpet materials, and shelf trim panels are almost universally employed to satisfy such demand. The characteristic of such semi-rigid components (i.e., propensity to bend or shred rather than be cut cleanly) introduces limitations as to how exacting dimensional tolerance requirements may be specified, regardless of the trimming method used (e.g., by use of mechanical blades or by water jets).
One application where the above-mentioned tolerance limitations are especially critical is the trimming of an automotive headliner and the mounting of a locating feature on the trimmed headliner for centered installation in an automobile. To illustrate, and referring now to FIG. 1A, a prior art centering process involves an operator 10, a locating feature 12, and a trimmed headliner 14 having longitudinal axisor center line 16. One way to center the headliner 14 on the underside of an automobile roof is to affix locating feature 12 (e.g., a pin, clip, or the like) to the backside of headliner 14, which locating feature is adapted to be received in corresponding holes, grooves, or the like formed in the steel roof of the automobile. The prior art process involved punching holes onto the theoretical center line (i.e., the center line prior to the trimming operation) of the headliner 14. However, due to the limitations on the accuracy of the trimming operations, the actual center line of the trimmed panel may be to the left or to the right of where the holes were punched. For example, punched holes 18 may result when too much material is trimmed off the left side of headliner 14 and too little trimmed off the right side, while punched holes 20 result when too little is trimmed off the left side and too much off the right side. To further exacerbate this problem, the process of forming the holes is also inherently limited by the materials involved. This imprecision adds to the cumulative process tolerance regarding the location of the locating feature. The operator 10 must then visually locate the holes, which are difficult to see due to their small size and headliner 14 construction. The operator 10 then manually positions and glues locating device 12 into the holes. The result is that the final assembled headliner 14 is quite often unacceptable in terms of centering once installed into a vehicle because the theoretical center line, about which the holes are punched, and which are used in locating and mounting the locating device 12, is not maintained relative to the trimmed edges of headliner 14. As shown in FIG. 1B, the result of installing such a headliner 14 to the underside of an automobile roof 22 is, at a minimum, poor appearance, and which may require costly re-work.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide an improved method and apparatus for centering and aligning semi-rigid materials, such as an automotive headliner, for mounting a locating device thereon.